much appreciate comments and suggestions from the participants in those seminars, two anonymous

Abstract Theories of government–international court relations assume that judges share an interest in expanding the reach of their court+ Yet, casual observation sug-gests that international judges vary in their activist orientations and that govern-ments selectively appoint judges+ This article explores a new data set of dissents in the European Court of Human Rights ~ECHR! to estimate the ideal points of judges+ The results show that activism-restraint is indeed the main dimension of contestation among judges+ Variation in judicial activism cannot be accounted for by different legal cultures of judges or by levels of domestic human rights observance in the judges ’ countries of origins+ Instead, aspiring European Union ~EU! members and governments more favorably disposed toward European integration appoint more activ-ist judges+ These results imply that politics matters in the appointment of inter-national judges and that EU expansion was an important driving force behind the ECHR’s increased activism+ More generally, the analysis suggests that agent selec-tion is an important and understudied tool for influencing international organizations+ On 6 October 2005, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Right